this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Preface: I'm a Christian, so this will be about the Christian view on things. I can't really speak for other religions, since I don't really know enough about them.
On prayer: asking for miracles is not actually the main point of prayer, the main parts are listening to God, and God listening to you. Imagine a perfect parent/child relationship. Sure, there will be the occasional "hey dad, I need some money to make this month's rent. Can you help please?" or similar conversation, but most of the time it will be the child learning from the wisdom of the parent, or the parent helping the child vent. If you want to see an example of what Christianity says is the sort of things to pray, look at the book of Psalms in the bible.
On other religions: yes, of course at least most religions are fake. A false religion could be started by someone who believes they heard from God but got it wrong, or someone who wants to be the head of a religion for their own gain. Many religions warn about false prophets, so this is hardly a surprising thing.
Other religions are fake, but my religion....
Have you never disagreed with someone? At that point, at least one of you is wrong. You believe what must be true based on what you've seen, so of course you think you're right.
It's the same with religion. Because there's disagreement between each different belief (including atheism and such), there can be at most one correct option. I believe Christianity, because based on what I've seen that is by far the most sound option.
I have a lot of opinions and beliefs that I can realize probably aren't correct
You think there can only be one god? That sounds limiting. I don't believe in any, but say does Buddhism really contradict most of Christianity real values? Like be good to people (help the less fortunate) try to let things go to not burden your well being (praying for forgiveness), respect others (do unto others). Besides having to actually believe in a god what's the difference between the two? Though the Buddhist view I'm thinking of doesn't require a god either but both seem to have teachings of compassion and love for your fellow person (some restrictions apply when dealing with intolerant types). I'm not saying you shouldn't have faith but don't say one has to be wrong.
Christianity and Buddhism (as well as many other religions) agree on a lot of the things you should do, but not why you should do them. Christianity says everyone is made in the image of God, so should be treated with love, while Buddhism (as far as I know) says showing compassion improves your karma and brings you closer to enlightenment. It might not seem like that difference matters, and according to some religions it doesn't, but some religions (especially Christianity) that difference in reason means everything. With Christianity, the only way to heaven is through Jesus, so a Buddhist living a life of love and compassion would be no closer to heaven.
As it turns out, religion is faith based
I wish I could bury my head into the sand enough to believe this clap-trap bullshit. Why does God never answer the prayers of amputees?
In most parent / child relationships, the child outlives the parent.
Why would that change anything? Regardless of who dies when, a good parent wants to bless their child, and a child wants to learn from a good parent.
It's not that intercessory prayer needs to work 100% to be convincing, it just needs to beat random chance and it doesn't do that.
Natural processes can describe how those things came to exist without needing to appeal to supernatural claims or gods.
You've seen things you attribute to a god, but people in other religions attribute the same things to their god and so far I don't think anyone has shown empirical evidence for any gods, and I don't know about you but I use empirical evidence when changing my confidence on whether something or someone exists or doesn't.
Many people have a negative opinion on organized religion because we can see the negative effects believing things without sufficient evidence can have on individuals and communities.
Can an atheist pray to god to ask for the enlightenment of his/her/its believers?
That’s right.
So god never answers the prayers of atheists… sounds pointless.
Predestination - sounds like you’re talking about god’s plan… why pray then? If it’s already in a plan, it’ll happen. If it’s not in the plan, it won’t.
If god doesn’t allow his children to slip away, how do you explain the actual verifiable existence of atheists and people that formerly had religion?
Why would you worship a God that casts aside so many people and condemns them to hell? Sounds more like a Devil.
Could you share what makes you so confident in the first quote, despite what you say in the second quote? How can you know God would not or has not answered any prayers that negatively affected a true follower, and how can one define whether God has negatively affected a true follower when one cannot intimately know God's true intentions?
No true Scotsman fallacy. Any time anyone can show someone praying for a negative thing against a follower you'll simply say that they weren't a "true follower".
What a bunch of horseshit. Your God is a monster.
Well you can, but that doesn't mean God will do it. You're asking a father, who loves his children, to remove their choice in the matter and force them away, despite him knowing it's better for them to stay.
If God never answers the prayers of non-followers; he’s really not convincing anyone new that he exists.
When did I say that? I just said that specific prayer will never be answered
Maybe it would; I don’t think you get to decide.